


America's Dairyland

by yekaterina



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Americana, Biblical Allusions, Dirt and Mud, F/M, Folk Music, Horniness, Summer of '79, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-06-12 03:29:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekaterina/pseuds/yekaterina
Summary: The man offers his hand to her. Katya’s first thought upon gazing down at it, the dirt-filled fingernails, the dinner-plate sized palm, is that he could smother her. She squats down and takes his hand in hers and shakes it, makes sure to grip his hand tight with her fingers like she does with every executive she has to meet, to show that she means business.(Katya goes on a summer retreat into the backwoods of Wisconsin.)





	1. Wisconsin, 1848

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to a lot of bluegrass and folk music and started writing this out, so i consider this a sort-of ode to the music of the country. i also watched a certain gay sheepherding movie many times and wove it into this as well. not really inspired by this [picture](https://78.media.tumblr.com/161a5692039ddaad17d8c524d12e1819/tumblr_oya3th7yoA1ws9fuzo1_500.jpg) but it is relevant and i love it.
> 
> upcoming warnings: the briefest scene of animal violence/death and a brief scene involving mild gore. there's also some "alternative" sexy stuff that happens and if you're not into the rough and wild, don't read!
> 
> there are probably inaccuracies about wisconsin and farming but really, it doesn't matter. there should be enough biblical references in this thing once it's all done to support a drinking game. i'm gay for jesus. happy summer!

Through the milky-white morning fog, a few strange characters had emerged, gifting Katya a sense of belonging in the unfamiliar surroundings.

But the fog swallowed the country people up whole, like it has with the towering firs and ash trees on either side of the road, as well as the tall wooden telephone poles lining the right side. Hand-painted signs periodically remind her of Jesus' name, but they too disappear into the white void. She's left to her loneliness, in the bed of a hay truck that rolled straight out of the Depression and into the parking lot at MKE airport.

She had seen two children, twin girls, their arms linked, carrying a pound of flour each in their free arm. Katya had called out to them, waving, but received only curious stares in return. A half-hour later the truck drove by a man and woman sitting on a parked four-wheeler.

The woman’s left breast was exposed to the misty-rain, in order to nurse her baby on the side of the road.

Katya had hidden down in the hay in response, face flushing after meeting the couple's wary eyes. She's seen her fair share of public nudity in Los Angeles, but exhibition and debauchery are world's away from what she saw. She felt invasive, not invaded.

It is a new feeling for her. She considers herself a respectable woman (by the standards back home, she's a moralist) but now she's lost— in all manners of speaking. Dusky black exhaust smoke aids the fog in cloaking the world around her. She's Hansel without any breadcrumbs.

Katya is hacking up coughs, too, every other mile or so.  _You'll just love the country's fresh air,_ she had been told. She laughs, despite herself.

The behemoth-vehicle that transports her through the woods of rural Milwaukee is captained by a withering old man by the name of Jake or Jack (she couldn’t understand his deep-rooted Kentucky twang). It jolts along a cracked-apart paved road like a ship sailing on rough waters. The wispy markings in the middle of the road act more as a suggestion for safety than a demand for it, if the old man's steering is anything to go by.

"How's your day been?" she had asked the old man when they were lifting her things up into the back of his truck.

"Better, now that I've seen yer pretty face," he'd said. He boosted her up as well, cupping her heel and lifting to bring her into the scratchy embrace of the haystacks filling the truck bed.

"Right back at you," she'd responded with a grin, earning a guffaw and a playful smack on the toe of her shoe.

She proceeded to ask him questions regarding location through the open rear window, to which he responded in vague assurances that he knows where she is headed better than she does. Katya took his word for it after her eighth attempt.

His near-deafness causes her to be more than aware of his musical selections, the loud music adding another layer of vibration to the already nerve-racking shaky ride.

The songs are all too old, haunting bluegrass odes sung by wailing men, to be crackling out of the radio. Earlier she had stuck her head into the truck’s cab to see him changing cassettes in a strangely rigged-up portable tape player, his wrinkled fingers handling them with care.

Cigarette smoke unfurls out of the cab and into her nostrils, teasing her. Katya had earned a lick of the man's trust by sharing her Camel Golds with him but she hasn’t smoked during the odyssey of a drive. All the wood and hay and instability dissuades her. She's bitten her black nails instead.

She tells herself the journey to and journey from will be the only stressful parts of her months-long vacation and she relaxes her shoulders. A bird flies overhead, gliding easily along the summer breeze. Katya wills herself to take steady breaths as she watches the bird disappear into the trees.

The truck rumbles onto a bumpy as hell dirt-road, kicking up dust and mud and showering it down onto Katya, who throws herself onto the wood railing that lines the sides of the truck and clings on for dear life.

Her clothes, an old green army jacket and blue jeans, already wet with the light rain, are splattered by its dirty cousin.

"Wonderful," Katya frowns, relieves her white-knuckled grip to inspect her sodden clothing. The driver turns off his music and slows the truck’s speed to a crawl, grabbing hold of her attention.

“That billin’, o’er chere...” he begins. She leans into the cab and is right in the man's face. His skin is pock-marked and sun-scorched and his beard is black and brown and grey. “That chere’s the place ye told me tuh take ye. Firkus’ farm,” he informs her, pointing to it with his yellowed finger.

She brushes the wet strands of hair out of her eyes and squints behind her glasses to see better the outline of a farmhouse and two other buildings. It is far away, set back across a decent patch of green land. Plenty of trees have been cut down to make room for the man-made structures, but a group of tall fir and ash trees surrounds the house in a horseshoe and the forest thickens again a little ways behind the house.

There is a small convoy of trucks parked out front and animal shapes are visible in the yard. She makes out the shape of a person as well. The landscape resembles the pictures showed to her by the travel agency back in Los Angeles and she breathes a sigh of relief.

Nostalgia, of all things, brews in her gut, listening to the man talk about the farm and the long lineage that has kept it running for decades, the mysterious family drama that divided maternal and paternal relatives after the deaths of the Firkus parents. He speaks with such smoky-tongued reverence of the family that she almost forgets it is town gossip he's feeding into her ears.

Katya likes him and wishes he’d impart an old man’s earthy wisdom unto her. She chalks the feelings up to stories she’s heard about the country, books she’s read, films she’s seen. The land she's journeyed into lives up to her expectations. Surpasses them, even.

Fog shields most of the area, but the farmhouse becomes more distinct as they crawl closer, revealing itself to be of Gothic design, painted all-black, save for the white detailing. It has a red shingled roof, rectangle windows on the first floor, octagon ones on the second.

There appears to be a third. An attic, most likely. She can’t remember the information she was given.

The cottage she’ll be living in is to the left of the farmhouse and is tucked away, located within the trees, indistinguishable. The barn house is to the right and further back, standing high and mighty, white-washed and covered by a black roof. Its doors are open and cows and pigs meander in and out of it. She spots three dogs, two border collies and a greyhound, sleeping outside the barn.

There is a man standing in the dirt driveway, though he more resembles a walking Sequoia than any man Katya’s seen.

The driver cranks down his window and hollers at him. He calls the man “Big John” and proceeds to bellow out a song that goes along with the nickname, earning a headshake from John.

Katya stares at the man from her haystack seat until the truck comes to a stop in front of him. Her heart finally starts to slow to a regular beat as she begins to process that she hasn't died in a fiery crash on a Wisconsin backroad.

The man is wearing a battered baseball cap that reads WISCONSIN 1848 and underneath the hat, he appears to have shaved off all his hair. Or lost it, Katya can't make out what his age is supposed to be. The man could be anywhere from twenty to fifty, the wrinkles on his face either set-in or just a temporary reaction to the sun. The hair on his face makes up for his baldness, overgrown stubble covers his cheeks down to the underside of his jaw. He does some upkeep, it would seem, but not a lot. His eyebrows are bushy, unkempt.

His clothes are filthy with mud and hay and there’s a stench wafting off of him that can be succinctly described as ‘farm’.

He's wearing a grey henley shirt with chest hair visible through the open buttons and his green pants look to be part of a pair of coveralls. Its long sleeves are wrapped tight around his hips, which are wide, but not as wide as his shoulders. His pants are tucked into a pair of black rubber boots that leave deep impressions in the mud as he stomps through it with the grace of a grizzly bear. Katya's sneakers will be ruined.

“Are you Shea’s brother?” Katya yells down at him, leaning over the side railing to do so. “The shepherd?”

He confirms her suspicions by nodding and he rounds the truck, unlatching the tailgate for her. She begins shoving her suitcase and guitar case down the truck bed, producing vicious scraping sounds against the wood. He tells her to stop and waves to come to the edge.

The man offers his hand to her. Katya’s first thought upon gazing down at it, the dirt-filled fingernails, the dinner-plate sized palm, is that he could smother her. She squats down and takes his hand in hers and shakes it, makes sure to grip his hand tight with her fingers like she does with every executive she has to meet, to show that she means business.

"Hello," she offers, warmly. Katya grins down at him, fuller and kinder than she would with an executive. She lays it on a little thick, actually. Katya's got to be the only eligible woman for miles. It's the least she can do. And she can't help it, anyway.

"Hi," the man replies with a smile but it is tight-lipped, the corners of his mouth barely rising before they fall back down into a straight line. Katya's own smile falls and she cuts her eyes towards the farmhouse. It's beautiful. Something out of a photo exhibit on rural America.

He lets go of her hand to take her waist into his grip and he hoists her down off the truck in one swift motion. His hands are warm on her body and two big dirt handprints stain her jacket. He doesn’t apologize, but his face reddens and he doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Brian,” he says, quietly, when she’s bent over, dusting off her pants. She rises up and studies him. His eyes are a warm, deep brown color, resembling dark lacquer. His tanned skin appears to have a softness that should’ve been beaten down by the conditions of the landscape and the work she’s been told he does. He jerks his head up at the farmhouse behind her. One of his nostrils is crooked. “Shea’s inside.”

His voice is soft too, in the way that says he doesn’t see a reason in being loud. Given Katya’s desire for a quiet country retreat, she appreciates his shyness more than she is put off by it. She introduces herself but he just nods and hauls himself onto the truck bed, talks to the driver through the rear window like an old friend, with a sense of warmth he didn’t show to her outside of his reserved politeness. She's put off by it.

Katya heads towards the farmhouse but not without looking over her shoulder between steps. She watches as Brian picks up her suitcase and guitar case with the ease of a bird of prey snatching up its fish dinner. He stays involved in a discussion on bluegrass with the driver, calling the old man Uncle Jacob.


	2. Water over Foot

“How many animals do you have again?” she asks Shea over dinner that evening. Shea’s accountant, Pearl, sits beside the younger Firkus and a group of farmhands introduced to Katya as Dusty, Violet, Roy, and Kurtis fill in the seats surrounding the circular table. They're all drinking Pabst Blue Ribbons, save Shea and Pearl. Violet had convinced Katya to have the beer.

There’s an empty seat across from Katya and she assumes it is Brian’s. She hasn’t seen him since he delivered her suitcases to her cottage after she had been given the tour by Pearl. He had departed briskly, without a word.

“We have about a hundred sheep, five cows, two pigs, eight chickens, and four goats," Shea rattles the numbers off like a well-oiled machine. "The numbers fluctuate, but those are the averages."

"And we have the dogs," Pearl adds. Shea nods and smiles around a bite of asparagus, one of many vegetables set on the table.

It is a house of vegetarians. Katya was told over the phone that she is welcome to buy and cook whatever meat she wants. If she had a kitchen in her cottage, she would, but she doesn’t. The idea of stinking up a house surrounding by cows with steak is enough to make her cringe. Vegetables will have to do.

“That’s a lot of fucking sheep!” Katya’s eyes are wide and she sits erect, her neck craned forward in surprise. The table erupts into easy laughter. She sits back in disbelief and chomps on a mouthful of corn. “What… Where do you keep them?”

She had already been given information regarding all the questions she has jumbling around in her brain, but in truth, she paid little attention to the travel agency after seeing the price Shea was offering. Katya isn’t a world-famous musician by any means, but she sells well, and it was a steal.

“Them and the cows graze in a pasture beyond the house,” Shea says. She gestures behind her head with her spoon. “It’s through the woods. There’s a trail that leads you to it, right by the cottage, if you’re ever curious. It’s a decent walk, but Brian uses his four-wheeler to go down it. You’ll hear him."

Shea sits back in her chair. Pearl interlocks their fingers in a subtle manner and Katya offers them both a gentle look. Shea returns it, as well as Pearl.

“Ask him to take you some time!" Pearl adds on again.

“Does he tend the sheep all himself?” Katya directs this towards Shea then looks around at the kind, tired, dirty faces of the farmhands. “And the rest is sort of a…” she waves her fork around as she searches for her words. “Divide and conquer situation?”

Shea’s preoccupied with her wine glass and whatever Pearl is whispering into her ear, so Dusty, the farmhand seated to her left, leans over. He smells like bug spray, more than anything, but the aromas of hard-work have not subsided over the course of the meal.

Neither has the remains of the heavy heat emancipating from the wood-burning stove. She's sweating just from sitting down.

“I help out with the sheep as much as I can, but he’s the best with them,” Dusty tells her. “He’s like King David or somethin'. They can get frustratin’ but he keeps a level head no matter what. A hundred sounds like a lot, but it’s really nothin’ for one shepherd with a good dog. And we got two of them collies like Miss Pearl said. That greyhound is alright too.”

“Brian helps out with everything,” Roy, the farmhand to her right, adds. His tone suggests that ‘helps out’ isn’t entirely positive. “But it’s like what you said. Me and Dusty care for the cows, Violet and Kurtis tend the chickens and the pigs. The jobs may change around, but typically that’s how it goes. But those goats are all Brian’s. He loves those little guys.”

“Does he not eat here?” she asks Roy after some time has passed and bellies were filled. Shea and Pearl went upstairs to bed. Dusty and Kurtis cleared the table and are washing dishes in the kitchen. Violet's sitting next to Katya, her arm slung over the back of Katya's chair, and she's smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that the two women have been sharing.

“Brian eats when he eats. I think he lit out to go see a movie,” Roy is shuffling a deck of cards, he and Katya having started up a game of blackjack. “He’s stubborn, you know. Solitary. Tries to do all the work himself,” he stops shuffling. “I’m sure he’ll turn into a ghost with a guest around.”

“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” Katya states, serious enough to make the exasperated expression fixed into Roy's skin soften up into a look of understanding.

Coming here was promised to be more of a boon to the farmers than a burden and she was assured her staying in the cottage would keep her well out of everyone’s way during working hours.

“He’s like that out of his own volition!” Dusty offers from his place at the sink. Katya and Roy twist around in their chairs to listen to him. “And you know what's funny? He gets the dirtiest out of all of us, but he's a stickler for being clean. That man takes the longest baths, I swear.”

“Right!” Roy agrees, prompting a laugh from Dusty and Kurtis. Violet pipes up to tell Dusty he ought to start bathing like Brian and he jokingly tries to start a fight with her, but gets silenced by Pearl, who has reappeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed in a dark purple bathrobe. This elicits a laugh from Violet that gets silenced as well. The farmhands remain as quiet as scolded children until Pearl goes back upstairs.

Violet puts on a pout and passes the cigarette to Katya, who stumbles over trying not to laugh, lest Pearl has no reservations about reprimanding the guest, too. Roy starts shuffling the cards again and deals when Katya says she's ready. She never gets blackjack and all the farmhands tease her about living a state away from Vegas but being terrible at casino games.

Katya laughs with them, understanding this is as harsh as they could ever be to her. She's called a city girl. It's nice.

After saying goodnight to everyone, Katya has a cigarette out on the front porch and retires to the cottage.

Not long after she strips down and tucks herself in, she hears two voices outside. She slips out from under the covers and opens one of her windows' curtains to see Violet in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. Brian's standing out in the yard. They're talking about the animals, which disinterests her, and after a little while of spying on them, she turns around to head back to bed.

"Did someone smoke out here?" Brian asks. Katya spins back around to see him up on the porch, standing right where she had stood earlier. In the heat-haze, the kerosene lanterns hanging around his head give him a glowing white aura. He runs his hand across the railing where Katya had ashed out her cigarette and draws his fingers up to his nose. "I thought Roy quit."

"Katya does," Violet replies. Brian looks straight at the cottage, making Katya jump and jerk the curtain back across the glass. She presses her back to the wall beside the window and listens for any signs of being caught.

"Guess I'll be getting used to that," she hears him say after a couple moments have passed. A barking laugh from Violet follows and Katya's shoulders sink, feeling slighted.

Katya mutters  _Ridiculous..._ under her breath and peels back the curtain again. Brian has moved to sit in the rocking chair next to Violet and Katya can hear that they're talking, but she can't discern their voices from the singing insects of the night. She ends her investigation and collapses onto the bed, suddenly very exhausted from her travels.

The next evening she sits outside her cottage, strumming her guitar in a rhythm she thinks Jacob would like. She's barefoot and dirt crusts on the arch of her foot and between her toes, skirting up her ankles and calves. Her athletic shorts are red and white, stained green from the grass, despite sitting on a raggedy old blanket all day.

It is humid outside, the air is sizzling and snapping at her and everything there is to see is blurred is by waves of heat.

Her skin is slimy, courtesy of sweat and the bug spray gifted to her by Pearl. She is sweating through her henley and pulling her hair up to a bun has done little to cool her off, but it is somehow even hotter inside. Red bumps are already rising on her thighs from the mosquitoes hungry for fresh blood.  

She hears a motor rise above the ceaseless singing of the cicadas. Katya counts the time on her wrist watch until three minutes pass and Brian is coming up the path out of the woods on his four-wheeler.

The collies on the back of it bark when they see her and one of them leaps off and runs over, sniffs and licks at the leftovers of her sandwich. She pets the dirty dog's head, scratches behind its ears.

Brian parks the four-wheeler and dismounts it, walks over with his canteen in hand and whistles at the dog and it backs away from her. Katya hands over the crusts anyway, smiling as the collie runs back to its twin.  Brian sips at his canteen from the corner of his mouth as he stands before her, condensation dripping off the army green bottle. She sets her guitar to the side and unfolds her legs, blinks up at him.

"Whatchu playing?" His voice cracks on the _-ing_  and he sounds throaty, awkward, voice laden with an almost sleepy thickness. She wouldn't be shocked to find out he hasn't spoken all day.

He swallows, producing an audible gulp. Brian smells particularly ripe and Katya tells herself she has to get used to the farm smells. But she doubts she'll go nose-blind to them.

"Something old," she says. He smiles, not with his teeth. Brian's lips aren't dried up by some miracle, they're full and soft-looking. Hers are cracking in the heat. "Shea tells me you have a guitar," she runs her finger down the neck of her own, fingertip sliding against a warm metal string. "That your grandfather taught you?"

He twists around by the waist, casting a look back to the farmhouse. He turns back around and nods, then drops his gaze down to the ground.

"You got your feet dirty." Brian observes. His frankness would sound judgmental if he wasn't as dirty as she's ever seen him. His clothes are completely sodden with mud, his hands and face slathered with it. Strands of grass are sprinkled from his thighs down to the toes of his black rubber boots. She laughs, but he maintains the straight face.

His hat is tucked into the pants pocket of his coveralls, allowing her to get a better look at his eyes. More black than brown in the dark evening, they shine under the lights flickering outside the cottage. She likes his eyes, not just for the color, but for the skin that bunches up under them when he decides to smile. It both makes him aged and ageless, his crow's feet that come and go so freely, unlike hers.

Brian is looking at her like he's waiting for something. Permission, maybe. She's about to ask him what it is when he bends over and wraps his hand around her ankle.

He twists his wrist and slides his palm down to cup her heel and pull her leg up in the air at an angle that he appears surprised that she can hold without any strain.  She bunches up the blanket underneath her as he inspects her like an antique and shakes his canteen around in his other hand.

Without a warning, he pours the water over her foot. It is ice cold and she yelps, jerks in his grip, toes flexing. He slides his fingers across her skin, adding her dirt to his own and somehow leaving none behind when he lets her go, like a ghost. Katya draws her leg down slowly, not without dragging her toes down his thigh and calf, undoing his work. He huffs through his nose and he looks exasperated. She grins up at him.

"Keep to the stone path," he means the stones leading to her cottage. The hand that held her wrings the fallen coverall sleeve at his hip. "Or wear shoes. If you track mud and dirt inside, I'll have to clean up after your mess."

"I can handle my own damn messes," Katya states, with more loudness and enunciation than he's been capable of. His lips part and Brian hesitates before saying a quiet goodnight. He retreats in silence and straddles the four-wheeler, drives it away to park beside the barn and let the dogs hop off the back to curl up on the ground.

Katya watches him walk across the land all the way up to the moment he opens the farmhouse's front door and disappears from her sight. She strokes her foot idly, mimicking the clinical pattern of his fingers.


	3. Seeking Transcendentalism

Life on a farm on the outskirts of Milwaukee is uneventful, as Katya had long been dreaming of.

Every day in Los Angeles there is an uncountable amount of things happening, at any time and any place, and the choices and opportunities swallow her whole. But in a town of fewer than 500 people, one has to search for something to do, which she has made no attempts at.

On Sundays, she has the farm all to herself. She wouldn't know it, as she sleeps through the morning and awakes after her hosts return at some hour past noon, dressed in their finest.

They come home smelling of sweat, incense, and coffee. They all look handsome, Shea and Pearl in dresses they trade with each other, Violet in a necktie that is sometimes around the neck of Kurtis or Roy, Dusty and Brian in suit jackets and bolo ties they alternate every week.

Brian, in particular, looks handsome. He appears taller in a suit than he does in his green coveralls or his jean overalls.

Katya doesn't see much of the shepherd. He does as Roy predicted, becomes a ghost, existing more as an entity talked about than seen. His four-wheeler rumbles in the evenings and his truck roars on days he goes to the market to sell milk. He doesn't go out much on weekends like the farmhands do. She is told he goes to the library and to the record store, not to the bars.

She's been invited to trips into town but has thus far declined, citing that she wants to keep away from civilization for now. She keeps to her cottage, mainly, does little more than meditate, read, listen to music on her Walkman and laze about while playing her guitar.

The cottage is an old stone, one-room building that is more akin to a structure built in the hills of some European countryside, not a building set back on a Wisconsin farm. Shea had informed her that it was where the ground was broken on Firkus lands, sometime in the early twentieth century.

She has no doubt about the authenticity of that statement. The wood floors crackle under her feet, leaving splinters in her toes, and there is no running water or electricity. Her sources of light are old kerosene lanterns. Kurtis showed her how to operate them. He was overtalkative but patient with her, with chicken feathers on his shoulders and hay in his golden hair.

Her only complaint about the farm, which she doesn't voice, is the humidity. California has a dry heat, one that is escapable in the shade. Milwaukee is full of wet hot air. Katya's hair frizzes no matter where she goes and she's given up on brushing her shoulder-length waves, lets her hair tangle and curl into something mildly concerning. Nobody says a word to her about it.

Twice a day she fills herself up with the homemade meals provided to her, breakfast being unnecessary. Katya's gained a couple pounds in her time at the farm and she can feel the weight around her hips. She rubs her thumbs over them, imagining herself to be a waddling wife carrying a baby.

She had arrived at the beginning of May. Around the middle of June, she decides to get serious about writing again.

The spirit of her surroundings possesses her to write folksy compositions and she takes to venturing around the farm, both familiarizing herself and scouting locations for subject matter.

Katya's returning to her bed from one of these trips but stops at her door and turns around upon hearing a motor running. Dusty is rumbling along the dirt path leading to the woods on a loud John Deere vehicle, its green and yellow paint slathered in mud. She walks towards the path, cupping her hands around her mouth to ask him what he’s doing.

“Runnin’ Bry his lunch!” Dusty yells over the chug of the engine. He shuts it off after pulling up to her and she appreciates the gesture. He gently tilts his head towards the empty seat next to him, careful not to send his cowboy hat to the ground. “Dumbo forgot it. Wanna come and laugh?”

“I could do it,” she offers. He crosses his arms over the wheel, clearly curious as to why the lazy shut-in wants to help. She waves her hand at the animal shit all over his shirt in response. The smell is pungent and Katya's eyes are watering, she's trying not to gag on the foul air. Dusty is oblivious until his eyes widen in realization.

“Ah! We-ll. Now that you mention it...” He reaches into the small bed on the back of the little truck and hands her a large, busted-up and rust-red lunch pail. His shoulders shake with a laugh when she notes its heaviness. He tips his cowboy hat to her and winks. “Thanks, Kat. See you at suppertime.”

Dusty’s shortening of names keeps her smiling through the long lonesome walk in the woods. She comes upon Brian in a pasture, sees him standing inside of a gate with the sheep. The two collies herd the mass of animals within the metal borders and Brian selects one of the sheep and brings it down in a gentle tackle. He has the animal sitting up against his chest, whittling down its hooves as Katya approaches.

“Hey,” she greets him, leaning over the bracket of fencing closest to him. He continues whittling with a pair of shears but says a "Hi," in return. Katya brings the pail up to balance on top of the fence and she watches him work.

His raglan shirt sleeves are brown with dirt and stretch around his biceps, scrunching up his hairy forearms as they move, revealing the sweat dappling his skin. He's shining under the sun, glowing even, neck sure to be burning, but his baseball cap shields his face in dark shadow.

“So you’re from Los Angeles?” he asks, after a full minute of not looking up at her. He stops whittling and breaks the minute apart. It is Monday and his face is fuzzy again after his weekly shaving for church. “Tell me what it's like.”

“Intense,” she says. Katya gazes down at the sheep in wonder. It is so calm in his big arms, nuzzling into him even. One of her hands wraps around the fence, her fingers coiling tight. The other draws the pail to her chest, allowing her to hug it and let the coldness of the metal seep into her warm skin.

She goes on in describing Los Angeles' inherent hectic nature, built into it because of the American Dream landscape. It is clear he isn't captivated by her stories. He's too polite, listens too intently. She runs out of things to say. He's been rubbing his knuckles over the sheep's head, eliciting soft, content bleats from the creature. He rises suddenly and lets the sheep join the herd.

"Are you seeking transcendentalism?" he asks. She tells him Walden bored her when she read it in high school, but she's open to revisiting it. He makes a short humming sound of approval. Brian stands in place, seemingly oblivious to why she's here. Katya blinks at him.

“Look, I brought your lunch. You should take a break,” she says, extending the pail to him over the fence.

He looks between it and her and moves the shears between his hands, not budging. He looks embarrassed, almost, as if he's only just noticed how awful he stinks. Sheeps bleat to fill the silence between them. Katya imagines knocking him upside the head with the pail but perishes the thought.

“I don't care, come on, it’s heavy," she rattles it, prompting him to tuck the shears under his arm and haul himself over the fence, telling the dogs to stay put when they try to hop after him.

Brian takes the pail and walks past her to sit down cross-legged on the ground. He begins pulling out plastic containers of food, sets them all around him, and spreads a cotton napkin into a make-shift placemat and moves the containers onto it. Katya laughs a little. He takes out another napkin and metal utensils and sets them down too.

He pulls out his green canteen and pours water over his head, soaking his clothes, before pouring it into his mouth. Katya catalogs every droplet that runs down his skin. Brian pours water over his hands as well and wipes them off on the second napkin. “Thank you,” he says. “Tell Dusty—“

“I don’t feel like walking back alone,” she interrupts. He nods and Katya sits down across from him. He shifts on the ground, pokes around the placemat with his fork. Katya rolls her eyes and pulls her knees to her chest. “Do you want me to go?”

“No. I’m a messy eater,” he says. She shrugs. Brian shrugs back and begins popping open the containers. He eats in silence. Katya lies down on the grass, stroking her softening stomach and watching the pink clouds slide by up ahead. It is the magic hour, everything is softer and in shades of red, wrapping her inside the womb of nature.

The sheep's bleating becomes white noise in her warm ears, sending her adrift into an easy slumber. Some time passes and she is awakened by the sound of paper crinkling and plastic container tops snapping closed. Katya sits up and is subject to Brian's gaze.

She takes her glasses off, realizing how smeared with dirt and dried water the lenses are. He holds out his palm and blinks at her until she deposits them into his possession. He wipes the lenses with his napkin and hands them back to her, cleaner, not clear, but clean. She thanks him and slides her glasses back on, smoothes out the strands of her hair around her ears.

“I've never met a woman like you before,” his voice doesn’t lose its gentleness, but the stiffening of Katya’s spine and tightening of her jaw is immediate. He’s putting up everything but stops. His eyes begin screwing into hers, hard, he’s digging her eyeballs out until her eye sockets are empty. She doesn’t know what to do with all of his attention. “You’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh,” she lets out the breath she had been holding and her shoulders fall from their hunch. He looks down again, blushing, and finishes packing up the pail. “Brian,” she starts, smiling. His eyes are more careful now and he hugs the pail to his chest. “You’re the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.”

He scoffs but he’s grinning, smile lines deepening into three squishy folds on both his cheeks. He scratches the back of his neck and Katya allows him a moment to collect himself.  "I'm done here. We should go back," he says, after regaining his composure.

She nods, stands up and offers him her hand. He takes it, hoists himself up off the ground and walks beside her to the four-wheeler. The two collies tail after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anachronism: the Sony Walkman was released in July 1979, not May, and was not available in the U.S. until June 1980.


	4. Goddamn Thorns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: mild gore and blood in this chapter.

Katya is perched on a wooden fence, watching Kurtis spread chicken feed for the clucking hens surrounding his boots when she starts to smell something she expected to leave behind in California. He notices it too, and he shakes his head and pauses his duties to look up at her.

“They’re behind the barn,” he explains. She makes like she’s not going to leave but he jerks his head back towards it. “Go on. Tell me if Dusty pisses himself when he gets caught.”

She crosses the short distance from the chicken coop to the barn house, stomping across grass and hay and dirt until she's rounding the towering structure.  Sure enough, Dusty, Roy, and Violet are huddled together, smoke rising above their heads.

Dusty's holding a joint and he’s taking a toke when he spots Katya. His eyes widen and he whips his hand behind his back, swallows down the smoke in one big gulp and he falls into a coughing fit. Violet falls into a fit of raucous laughter and Roy starts cursing and clapping him on the back, trying to get him to settle down.

Violet relaxes before Dusty does and she grins, beckons Katya over with a "Hey, lady!" and folds her arm atop Katya's shoulder as they  watch Dusty hack and spit until he’s done. Admirably, he's maintained his hold on the burning stick between his dirty fingers.

“Why are you guys hiding?” Katya questions, looking over at Violet. Her eyes are a dark shade of brown, like Brian's and Shea's. It is beautiful how the darkness seems to shift between reflecting light and sucking it in. Violet catches her staring, flicks her side for it, but she doesn't drop her smile. Katya gives her one back. 

“The ladies of the house don’t like us lighting up,” Roy interjects, rubbing Dusty’s back until he's standing upright again. “Brian would bust our asses too. He'd say it's bad for the animals or a similar flavor of horseshit.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dusty?” Violet says, smirking. She clicks her tongue at him, earning a look of derision from the gangly man. Katya whips her gaze between the two of them. "Bossman tanning your hide?"

“Shuddup," Dusty croaks, wiping his red eyes with his knuckles. His curls are usually a bird's nest without his cowboy hat to hold them down, but his fit has made it even more-so. He seems to notice this and he is quick to pat down his hair.

“Brian doesn’t seem like a hardass to me,” Katya says, lost amid the exchange. Violet shifts, draws her arm off of her and extends it out to Dusty, squeezing his shoulder gently, as if to apologize.

“You don’t know him,” Roy frowns, folding his arms. “He’s nice, but no-nonsense. I think he’s a little crazy, waking up so early and staying up so late. Just working, working, working."

“He’s done this all his life, Roy," Dusty says, sounding more put-together than he did a moment ago. "It means more to him than a seasonal job. He can’t afford to fuck around like we do.”

“I just think he should give that stick up his ass some wiggle room,” Roy raises his palms then throws them down. He looks to Katya as if to gain her support. He must think she's unbiased. “I mean for chrissakes, he’s ten years younger than me but it's like being around my dad. I can’t ever impress the man.”

Dusty leans into Roy’s space and says a response Katya can't hear. Violet rolls her eyes and loops her arm with Katya’s, taking her along as she leaves the two men behind to argue. She waves the joint around between her fingers and Katya gawks, baffled as to how she managed that feat.

“Hey, Kurt!” Violet calls out, once they're within range of him. He rises up from petting a chicken and sets his hands on his hips, squinting in the harsh sunlight. “Come smoke this doobie with me and Katya!”

The men all around shout at Violet to be quiet, eliciting laughs from both her and Katya. Nonetheless, Kurtis waits for them to reach him and they finish smoking in Katya’s cottage, safe from any and all prying eyes.

She begins settling in for hours of television and book reading in the farmhouse and becomes privy to Brian's daily comings and goings. He's always searching around. For his car keys, a book, Shea or Pearl to answer a money question, a fruit to eat, Dusty to give him a shirt back, his bottle of blackberry brandy or a carton of milk. He's gone as quickly as he arrives, his _Goodbye's_  as quiet as his _Hello's_.

Quieter still are his _Goodnight's_  and footsteps up the stairs at the end of the day. He must've been some clever predator animal in another life, he makes so little sound. A mountain lion, maybe. Perhaps a barn owl. He doesn't have the disposition for it, though. _Quiet as a mouse._

She's in the living room watching  _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_ when the front door opens with a whispering creak. Brian is done for the night, the hour is past nine and she can smell the farm on him from her place on the couch. Katya breaks eye contact with Elizabeth Taylor to look at him.

He's leaning against the door, straps of his overalls hanging down around his hips and the bib hanging at his crotch. He's wiping his bare chest with his shirt, thick hairs going smooth and then unruly with the languid motions. She lets him catch her staring, his sweaty dirt-streaked skin going flush because of her grin.

Brian ignores her in favor of shucking off his boots, the wet squelching sound softer than when the farmhands kick theirs off. He disappears into the kitchen. A cabinet opens and shuts and he reappears, shirt on and socks off.

His bare feet are so pale, unlike the rest of his browning skin. She notes the contrast between his thick ankles and the dark wood floors as he walks over to her.  Both of his hands sink into the back of the couch, on either side of her head.

He smells bad, but there's that blackberry brandy smell about him too. She's seen him wrap his dark pink mouth around the long bottle head plenty of times, swallowing down a sip or two, never large gulps. Regardless, she takes the image and molds it into one of him sucking her cock when she lies in bed with her hand down her underwear.

"Would you look at Lizzy," he drawls. As if hearing his words, she does a dramatic turn towards the camera. Katya laughs, sinks down in her seat. Her legs spread a little, then close when she sees that she's getting hard. She hears him fold his arms on the couch. He hums and the sound is right in her ear. "What a queen. Paul too. Look at those blue eyes."

"You know this movie?" she asks, twisting her neck to look at him. He's upright again, backlit by the moon through the window behind him. His face is cast in a warm yellow glow from the floor lamp to the left. It is a pleasure to see his eyes brighten and his lips spread into a smile. Katya doubts many others get to see it happen.

"Sleep tight, Katya," Brian says instead of answering. He sounds far-off, dreamy, sleepy actually. Katya opens her mouth to question him but he's quicker to wrap  his hand around her shoulder and rub it with purpose like he's getting a knot out.

She gasps, then shudders out a deep sigh but he slips out of her reach, into the shadows of the staircase before she can say his name. When she does, he doesn't respond. He leaves her to sit alone and stare at the television rather than watch it. Katya looks down at her crotch and finds she's only grown harder.

Minutes later she hears the bath running and she turns down the television volume at the sound of singing. Katya creeps up the stairs and to the bathroom, sets her head against the closed door. It is a folk song he's crooning, one about a lonesome valley. Jacob had listened to it on the drive. She listens but for a moment longer, then finishes her movie.

Katya comes into the farmhouse in search of an afternoon beer and sees Brian seated beside the kitchen table. Shea is seated across from him and is armed with a big pair of tweezers, working at something on his face. Katya walks over slowly, taking in the sight of a bloodied towel on the table. Thin black triangles are lined up on it. They look like nightmarish animal teeth.

"Goddamn thorns stuck in his head," Shea informs her, not waiting for the question. Katya freezes in place. Brian doesn't meet her eyes, he can't, he's hunched over and hanging his head for Shea. "One of the dogs was sniffing a bush of them and Brian tripped trying to stop her. Went head-first into it."

"How deep," Katya starts, before Shea stops cradling his cheek and waves her question away. She assures her nothing went deeper than skin. Katya's stomach doesn't get any less knotted up.

She stands behind Shea and crosses her arms, cringes in empathy when Shea pulls another one out of his forehead. Brian makes a whimper of pain through gritted teeth.  He's kneading his knees, his work-swollen knuckles popping. Katya sticks out her hand and he immediately grabs hold, squeezing harder each time Shea pries another thorn from his skin.

Katya hurts for him, and with him, his grip is strong, but there's some twisted sense of wonder and relief coiling in her gut at the humanization of this man. He feels pain. She wasn't so sure if he did.

White gauze is wrapped around his head after Shea gets Katya to apply disinfectant. He takes the pain pills dropped into his palm without any water and thanks them both, starts on his way to the stairs. His walk is far too slow and calculating for him to be alright. He gets a quarter of the way upstairs before a throat is cleared beside Katya.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Shea stands up after addressing him, scooting her chair across the floor. Brian stops dead in his tracks; a child reprimanded by his mother. He looks over his shoulder and has the deer in the headlights look in his eyes. Katya snorts, brings her fist up to her mouth to muffle her laugh.

"Katya's gonna keep her eyes on you," Shea says. "I don't trust you not to go back out there."

Brian turns around on the stairs and ambles into the living room, collapsing face-first onto the couch. Shea starts picking up everything on the table and fixes Katya with the same look she gave her brother, sending Katya to follow after him and sit down in the chair that allows her to see his face.

She turns on the television, keeping the volume low as they watch the local news.

"Do you feel any better?" she asks him, during the sixth commercial break.

"I was lucky I didn't get any in my eyes," Brian whispers. He sounds in awe. "Yeah. I feel better. Don't," his voice softens and he adjusts on the couch, curling an arm up to reach over the armrest. His fingers almost touch her forearm where her shirtsleeve is rolled up past her pink elbow. "Don't leave me until I'm asleep. Please."

"I'll be here when you wake up," she promises him.

He does touch her then, calloused fingertips brushing through the blonde hairs covering her arm. He slides his hand down to her wrist before he pulls away, bringing his fists to his chest before he turns over, away from her. She tugs down her shirt sleeve and turns off the television, waits until he's breathing slowly to drift off as well.


	5. Cabin Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I feel... A little dizzy,” Brian admits, bringing a finger up to his wounded head. Katya draws her hand up as well to drag over the gauze and he winces but drops his hand to let hers take its place. She gently pokes at the bandage, pressing more over the rough edges of the gauze than the red dots in the center. She grazes his ears and eyebrows with her nails, earning little twitches from him in response.

Brian's voice wakes her, saying something she isn't lucid enough to discern from a series of garbled sounds.

She tells him to _Shut up for a second!_ and she rolls over, pulls the crust out of her eyelashes until she can see again. The lights are on in the kitchen, providing scarce illumination in the living room. She tacks on a _Please..._ at the end, too late for it to not sound like an after-thought.

He is standing above her, in a fuzzy pink sweater and grey sweatpants. He must've changed when she was sleeping. His sleeves are pushed up past his forearms and the pants scrunch up at his ankles. His forehead is wrapped in fresh white gauze. Tiny dots of red seep through the fabric and the sight makes Katya's stomach twist.

Brian turns on the antique lamp on the small table by his hip, against her groaned protest, shedding light directly into her eyes. She squirms down the cushions as to not be blinded.

“Do you want to see my goats?” he whispers. Katya blinks up at him. She doesn't remember moving onto the couch or falling asleep under a quilt. She paws at the soft material before hauling herself up into a sitting position, and her stomach twists further into a knot with the quick movement.

Katya pushes her arm out in a crawl, palm and fingers pressing into his belly to ground herself. She thinks he laughs at her, but her ears are so foggy. Her breath tastes awful. His sweater itches. A thumb strokes down from her ring finger to her wrist and it is gone before she registers it was there at all.

"How bad does your head hurt?” Katya asks. She clears her throat after hearing herself sound wrung-out from sleep. "You sound loopy."

"I think yours might be worse,” he says. She mutters in response, swats noncommittally at him. "I'm fine, Katya. Do you want to?"

"Okay, yeah, goats," she huffs, and holds both her hands out for him to pull her to her feet. He laughs at her, again. She can tell this time. Brian leads her outside, sleepy and stumbling and holding onto his arm so she doesn't trip over herself. He put Violet's boots on her before they exited the house and the earth squelches underneath her groggy stomping.

The sky is a piercing  _blue_  blue color but the air is warmer-toned, an orangeness is settled over the pastoral surroundings. She can't be sure of what time it is. Early evening, perhaps. The grass is lush green and glittering, wet with rain. How she slept through half the day and a rainstorm is beyond her. She couldn't have drunk that much.

"I didn't mean to sleep so late," she confesses to him, standing back as he pulls open the barn doors. The veins in his arms flex as the wood slides open, creaking like an old ship. Opening the doors blasts the smell of animals and hay into Katya's nostrils.

To her pleasant surprise, the stench of shit is absent. Brian catches her pulling a face and scoffs.

"We woke up earlier, remember?" he says, wiping his hands against each other. Katya nods and follows him into the barn. It is smaller on the inside than she imagined, with wood and metal gates sectioning off the animals. Cows and pigs are asleep in hay beds. "Around two in the morning, right? That moonshine sent us right back to sleep. _One_ of us harder than the other."

"Where is everyone?" she asks, ignoring his jibe. The farm appears deserted. Maybe it's a weekend and everyone else is out, but she can't remember what day it is, or what yesterday was, as has been the case for most of her stay. She brought a calendar but she’s buried it underneath crumpled sheet music, to be unearthed only once August has begun.

"Shea and Pearl are out at some restaurant," he takes looped ropes off of their hooks on the wooden wall, undoes the lassos and reloops them to hang up again, neater than they were before. "Roy's at his nephew's birthday party, Kurtis and Violet... hell if I know. Dusty's at Bible study."

"The moonshine... I didn't throw up, did I?" Katya folds her arms and cups her elbows, wrings her shirt sleeves. She knows herself better than to handle the hard stuff well.

"Right into Shea's potted azaleas!" Brian lets out a brief laugh. It is as loud as she's ever heard him. He maintains a mirthful, almost giddy, disposition, but his eyes go serious. "I told her it was me."

"Why would you do that?" she asks. He just shrugs and leaves her to her thoughts. He turns his back to her and starts to work a wood gate open. She takes a step back. "Is that all we did?"

Her eyes are wandering and she spots a cow peering over a neighboring gate out of the corner of her eye. Brian turns around and fixes her with a look so earnest her insides melt. In a voice that would not wake a newborn, he assures her that was all they did.

"But you did tell me I was pretty again," Brian says. The corner of his mouth rises in a smile and he leans back into the gate, one of his arms hanging over it out of sight. He'd be winking if he was Katya's usual pick of man, but he isn't. He keeps his smugness to a minimum, and even ducks his head down for a moment, suddenly ashamed about it.

"And?" she asks, relieved but embarrassed, staring into the neighbor cow's big brown eyes instead of Brian's. Her face is warm with leftover heat from being torn out of sleep, but there is a fresh hotness in her cheeks.

"I told you that you're pretty too," he says, punctuating this by unlocking the gate with a metallic click.

He eases it open and reveals four small goats sleeping together in a pile on top of a hay bed. Katya could cry at the sight and makes the warning sound of sharply inhaling. Brian holds a finger up to his lips. She nods, cups her hand over her mouth and takes tedious steps towards the dozing animals. Brian guides her with a hand on her lower back into sitting right in front of them.

“This is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," Brian whispers. He crouches down and edges forward, pets the side of the runt. "Johnny’s the baby.”

"I want the baby," she demands, holding her arms out. He lifts the tiny goat up in a delicate manner and sets him onto her lap, his legs folded. He awakes as soon as Katya pets him and he starts bleating loudly, his cries like a child's, scaring Katya and the other goats.

Brian sets his hand over hers and leans over to be in view of the baby goat, rubbing his knuckles across his nose and shushing him. The other goats rise up and sniff Katya, chew on her hair a little before settling back onto the hay-covered ground.

The baby quiets down into soft bleats and falls back asleep. Katya coos at the animal, gazing down at the soft black and white fur and four tiny hooves. She cries even, tears falling in silence. She's reminded then, watching the baby goat's stomach rise and fall in sleep, that her parents never let her go to any petting zoos or keep the stray cats and dogs she'd find.

 _Disease_ , they had warned her, before she knew what the meaning of the word was. She can't imagine anything as sweet as this baby goat carrying a sickness. She doesn't want to. But she does, she can't help it, and her tears fall heavier, though still in silence.

Brian crawls over to sit beside her and his thigh presses into hers. He brushes his calloused fingertip over her cheeks, flattening the tears against her skin until they dry up. He fingers through her hair, the messy waves made messier by the couch cushions she used as a pillow.

Katya's tears stop falling. She does nothing but breathe and stare at Brian, watching his every movement.

She holds the baby goat tighter, feels its steady heartbeat countering her racing one. Brian looks down to her lips that twitch in reaction, then back up at her eyes. He leans forward but to the side, kisses her cheek and slides his own stubbly one against her skin to kiss behind her ear, sighing into her hair. She closes her eyes and basks in his warmth, leans into him, but he pulls away.

Katya opens her eyes and he's half-way stood-up, to her instant annoyance. She tugs him back down and he almost collapses onto her and the goat, giggling, shutting up when her lips press into his. His lips are soft and plush like a woman's, wet, but his stubble scratches her skin.

Brian opens his mouth after some prodding and her tongue skims back and forth over his uneven teeth, relishing in the sharp pains when she catches on his jagged edges. She licks into his mouth, tasting his soft warm gums and hot tongue. She pulls out to breathe a ragged breath and he sucks on her bottom lip, teething at the flesh until she moans.

He gasps in surprise into her mouth and Katya opens her eyes to see that his are closed. His eyelashes are long and pretty. She pulls back just enough to press her fingers to his eyelids. Brian makes a small warbling sound before leaning forward and returning to the act of sucking on her flesh after she presses her lips to his again.

The goat bleats between their chests and they break apart quickly as if they've been caught by one of the human residents of the farm. They smile at each other, Brian scratching the back of his neck and blushing, and then down at the little animal as he hops up out of Katya's lap to curl up with his brothers. Her head is pounding anew. She wants to kiss him again.

“I feel... A little dizzy,” Brian admits, bringing a finger up to his wounded head. Katya draws her hand up as well to drag over the gauze and he winces but drops his hand to let hers take its place. She gently pokes at the bandage, pressing more over the rough edges of the gauze than the red dots in the center. She grazes his ears and eyebrows with her nails, earning little twitches from him in response.

“Me too,” Katya whispers. She yawns big before she can stop herself and Brian grins, his lips puffy. He has saliva coating his top lip. She'd like to kiss him again when it's nighttime, when they're out somewhere, when she'd leave a ring of lipstick around his mouth. But she can't fathom where they'd go. Or when she could corner him when he's not working.

She'd make him go, though, to wherever the hell they'd end up. Everyone here lets him off easy, but she has no interest in taking it easy on him.

"Aw," he breathes, taking her focus with the rasp of his voice. He stands and offers her his hand, pulls her up to her feet. Katya drops her head onto his chest. "Let's get you back to bed."

She makes no protest. He walks her to her cottage with his hand firm on her shoulder blade and tells her goodnight from the porch before he disappears into the falling evening. She hears the farmhouse's front door shut from her place in bed and slides a hand down into her underwear, wraps her arm around her shoulder to dig her fingers into where he's left her skin tingling.

 

 

The following days she hardly sees him, and not for lack of trying. When she does find him, it's when he is dead tired and smelling ripe from work. His polite greetings are forced as his eyes are sunken and his appearance is more haggard than ever. He tells her again and again that the animals are acting up, that he's getting no sleep waking at odd hours to tend to them.

He declines all her offers to head out with her on the town. She gets real in his face about it until one time his shoulders sink so low she thinks he's going to fall over. Katya leaves him be, and has a strange dream or two about Elizabeth Taylor and baseball caps soaking in blood. 

 

 

"Dusty said this was a seasonal job?” Katya asks, coming up alongside Kurtis as they set the table for dinner one evening.

Roy and Violet are out on the town, though it was not made clear if they went together or not. Regardless, Violet promised to bring back dessert, something which excites Katya far more than it has since her childhood.

Pearl’s manning the stove and Shea butters bread rolls on the neighboring counter. If she strains, Katya can catch pieces of their hushed conversation: _Those rolls smell good, You smell better, I need to sew up that hole in your sleeve, Careful that you don’t drop that butter on the floor I just mopped it._

"We go home in the fall,” Kurtis answers, bringing her back to him and their task. “Some other folks come and help during the winter,” His mouth remains open as if he means to continue, but he stops. His hands, each holding a knife and fork, remain idle above the table. He’s drifted off somewhere. It must be an unpleasant land, as his face screws up.

"Where do you guys live?" Katya tries, in an attempt to rope him back into a cheerful disposition, or at least distract him from his thoughts. She lets her genuine curiosity shine through more than her confusion; keeps her eyes warm, not squinting.

"Not _too_ far away,” Kurtis is quick to reply, clearly grateful for the change of direction. He drops the knife and fork onto the placemat just as quick, then straightens them out. “Save for Dusty. He comes all the way from Louisville."

"That's so far!” Katya exclaims. Kurtis’ face becomes unreadable. Katya's even more baffled than she was before and worried that she’s offended him somehow. He motions for her to step closer and she obliges, leaning in to offer her ear.

"Shea and Pearl are Friendly," Kurtis whispers. Katya can hear the capital F, even in his hushed tone. His breath smells of citrus and it is hot on her skin, already warmed by the heat from the oven. "I don't think he found that back home. I don’t think he even likes home. Isn't that why you came? And you're all the way from California."

Katya nods and Kurtis murmurs in a tone she interprets to be understanding. He cups her bicep and brings her even closer to him, drops his voice even lower.

"Did you know the farm is currently swept up in familial drama? Brian's paternal uncle doesn't think Shea and him should own it, because of Pearl. Nothing legal has happened yet," he breaks off and turns his head away, sighing, before turning back to breathe on her again. "It's why nobody visits. I can only imagine what'd happen if they knew about the rest of us. This place is a haven, you know? None of us are in this for a big profit. It's the experience. There's nothing like this where I'm from.”

Kurtis stops and pulls back, looking at her, looking like he regrets saying every word he so freely revealed. His grip on her tightens and loosens and his eyes drop down to the floor.

"I didn't hear a word," Katya whispers. She taps his cheek with the curve of the spoon she’s holding. Kurtis smiles weakly, unhands her and breaks up their distance some more, but doesn’t raise his voice.

"The guys who have been coming here for winter aren't that great," Kurtis says, purposefully clanging the dishware down onto the table to cover himself. "They drive Brian even further into his head. And during those dark months, that's bad. Wintertime makes everybody gloomy. He doesn't go on break, either. I don’t know how he doesn’t have cabin fever.”

She keeps her mouth shut, runs her finger around the inside dip of the dinner plate she is holding. Either Shea or Pearl has turned on the radio. June Carter Cash sings through a constant crackle.

"You worry about him, don't you?" Kurtis says. Katya peers up at him from under her eyelashes. "Me too. But. Not like you do," he shakes his head back and forth slowly. He's studying her. She freezes up, twists the plate around in her hands. He seems to come to a conclusion and his face fills with warmth. "He told me you're giving him a little bit of hell. He likes that.  _You_ , is what he said, actually."

Katya drops the plate onto the table. It doesn't break, but it produces a loud sound that gets Shea and Pearl's attention. Kurtis starts laughing, waves their concerns away and he checks the plate for cracks before placing it on a mat. He's given her whiplash, all the roads he has taken her down in a manner of minutes. She's never setting the table with him again.

"What?" Katya breathes. Her voice cracks and she clears her throat. Kurtis shuts up and the initial jolt that ran through her steadies into an even thump. "He said that? When?"

"He's been saying it since you showed up, sweetie," Kurtis smiles, checks her shoulder. "But most recently? Just the other day."

 

 

There’s a knock at her window that night long after everyone's supposed to have gone to bed.

She wraps a robe around the pajamas she's stayed in all day and wonders if it is Violet wanting to smoke with her. She runs through all the possible scenarios and decides to pursue the one in which saying yes doesn't end up in them kissing like teenagers at a sleepover. After last weekend, she knows to send her back to the farmhouse before the farmhand gets too friendly.

Katya pulls back the teal curtains to see Brian standing behind the dirty glass, looking as cleaned-up as he does for church, minus the suit.

She startles, jumps from the scare. She'd have expected Bigfoot at her window over him. Brian's face turns apologetic and he mouths a _Sorry!_ that calms her frazzled nerves. Katya stands on her tiptoes to unlock the latch on the sash and shoves up the ancient window as best she can, but it hiccups in its movement. It's all stilted and creaking, shaking in age and sprinkling dust everywhere.

The both of them cringe at the loud sounds, then Katya’s laughing at Brian's panicked little noises until he is shushing her. He cups his hands over hers and shoves the underside of the window half-way up in one fluid movement.

Brian wipes his hands off on the sides of his hips. He’s wearing blue jeans, the first time she’s seen them on him, not in overall form. They’re tight on him, unlike the overalls, wrapping around his hips, his thick thighs, and long calves. Katya’s tempted to send him off so she can look at his ass. His t-shirt is dark navy blue with a thin white line wrapping around his collar. A flowing script that reads WHAT WOULD DOLLY DO? is emblazoned across his torso. Over that, he has on an unzipped hoodie of a similar blue shade.

She sucks in her lips, physically holding back a comment on why he's so dolled up at home, but decides to save it for later.

“You want to get out of here?” he asks. He stuffs his hands into his hoodie’s pockets and looks as young as she’s ever seen him, doe-eyed, boyish, poorly-illuminated by Katya’s bedside lamp. She could pull him in and kiss him, for looking so sweet and sounding self-conscious.

“Why didn’t you go to my door?” Katya asks, grinning. She likes that he didn’t, but she won’t let on to that. Brian makes an aborted sound and waves his hands around in a noncommittal gesture. Katya rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I want to get out of here. Fucking finally. Where are we going?”

He grins back at her and he reaches up, clinging onto the top of the window frame and arching his back to hold himself steady. His shirt rises up his stomach past his belly button. All the hair and the defined muscle reminds her he's a man who could throw her around without a hitch, unlike the ones back home. His nose squishes against the window as he leans into it. Their breaths fog up the glass and she draws a dick over his shielded mouth, making him laugh gently until he quiets, watching her watch him.

“Have you ever been to a cornfield?”


	6. Glowing Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eventually, they head back where they came from. Katya follows after but she loses him for a couple of terrifying seconds until his hands are parting the stalks, revealing his face. Katya stares at him. Everything is too dreamlike for her not to brush her knuckles down his cheek. He takes her hand once more, leading her all the way back to the truck before he lets go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "lake superior" by lorine niedecker and "two-headed calf" by laura gilpin got me back into the groove of this. all very relevant. and i'm still retired... but i thought not posting this was a waste of good work. ...expect chapter 7 in the near future.

Katya burns through a pack of cigarettes sitting in the bed of Brian's truck.

He's driven her out to some other family farm not too far away from his, but far enough that she wouldn't know how to get back home should something horrible happen.

The cornstalks she's staring into are writhing and whispering in the wind and she is positive that something horrible is going to happen amongst the green. A corn-monster or a serial killer or the "American Gothic" couple will emerge and attack and she'll be chased to the bloody death in Bumfuck, Wisconsin. She's falling in love with this place, but not enough to die here.

She voiced these concerns which incited the amusement of her quiet companion, but to her relief, he hadn't outright mocked her fears nor did he venture into the stalks on his own. So they've been waiting, either for her to buck up or for him to complain that they're wasting the truck's battery and drive them back.

Brian's been whittling a piece of wood he pulled out of the glovebox after she spoke up. In the last two minutes, it has shaped up into a decent-looking whistle. Flecks of curled-up wood bits drift in a slow fall onto his shirt and jeans and pile up around his boots. He needs to be brushed clean.

"You know, Katya," he says, after a stretch of silence. She thinks he's going to cave, but then he's failing to hide a smirk. "You could set fire to this field. I think that's the bigger concern here than a, what was it, a corn-monster?"

His smirk widens into a toothy grin as he watches the annoyance register on her face. She does her best to ignore him and lights another cigarette, out of spite. Maybe she does want a corn-monster to come out. Just for a minute. Give him a good scare, cut him down to size.

"Huh," Katya makes a show of eyeing him up and down. "I didn't know you were a funny boy."

"I'm not," he says, suddenly self-conscious. "And I'm serious. Fields will catch fire at any chance they're given."

"And I'm serious about an ancient evil residing within the corn."

Brian stops whittling. He walks to the truck and hoists himself up onto the bed, sits down beside her, and stretches out his long legs.

A lonely towering wooden pole has a lightbulb that flickers nonstop, glazing them both with golden light. Besides that, it's only the full moon and stars illuminating their dark blue surroundings.

The singing night bugs are out in full force, chirping non-stop. Mosquitos are out on the prowl, too. Katya lathered herself in bug spray and drained the half-empty can before Brian got to use it. He didn't seem to mind. Besides, he has long sleeves. She's the one in a tank top.

On the drive, he told her he’d read about the light pollution in Los Angeles and wanted her to see some stars while she could. She’s decided not to tell him she couldn’t give a shit about space. His skin glows in the moon’s light, though. She can appreciate that much. He's so tan out in the sun but he's almost made pale here in the night. The light reveals the fine hairs on his neck as he cranes it to look up at the sky.

A bed quilt spares their asses from the metal beneath. Katya runs the hand not holding her cigarette over the pattern she begins to recognize from another night.

“What’s it like out there in the cottage?” Brian pops a piece of gum into his mouth and the distance between them is nonexistent, so he's breathing winter-mint into her nostrils. The smell mixes with the scents of night-time and a far-away forest fire. They heard about it on the radio. A local newswoman's fried voice detailed the damage after a segment on school budget cuts.

“It’s kind of like going to summer camp,” she says, dragging the pad of her thumb over the truck’s rear window behind her head, picking up dust in her finger's wake. The middle panel window is slid open and allows for the radio to fill the night. The Who are playing, courtesy of Katya having taken over the radio earlier. “But I have the whole cabin to myself.”

Brian mhm's, but she gets the sense that he’s never been to summer camp. He sets his whistle-carving aside and taps her thigh with the back of his hand. Katya’s fingers tense against the glass.

“You get enough rest, sleepy baby?” he asks, all too close to her face, eyes on her lips. It knocks the wind out of her. His mint gum is stretched out across his bottom row of teeth, wadded up and imprinted with jagged dents. “I don’t ever see your face until it’s afternoon.”

Katya summons a deep breath and ignores him, instead choosing to slide down the truck bed and hop off onto the ground. The gentle night wind ruffles the cornstalks as well as Katya’s hair. There's a flashlight in the truck bed and she grabs it, shines it right into Brian’s eyes. He groans and hides his face behind his hand. The flesh of his palm is glowing red.

“Come on," Katya says. "Let's go in."

 

 

There's room for one person at a time between the stalks, so Brian leads her from behind until they're at a muddy road dividing the field into sections. Every chaste touch to her shoulder blades sets her skin on fire.

Katya hands over the flashlight when he gets in front, walking them down a path that turns into more rows of corn. The stalks only reach Brian's shoulders but they rise past her head; they tickle her bare arms and continue to whisper amongst themselves. She swats at big fat buzzing bugs flying by her ears. She hates this, but the desire to leave dies after Brian reaches behind him and offers his hand to hold.

They're out of the corn and into a big patch of lush, overgrown grass. She can feel the softness even in her shoes and she hurries out of them to feel everything between her toes. The air doesn't reek of animals and the bugs have abandoned them for now. This is heaven.

It's darker, but the moon is bright-white enough to see decently. She goes down to the ground in a dramatic collapse. Brian takes his time to sit down next to her. He turns off the flashlight and begins running his hands through the thick strands of grass by her side.

“Have you ever thought about doing something other than farming?” Katya asks.

Surprise flashes across what she can see of his face, then confusion, then consideration. He lifts his hand and sets it in his lap to join its partner. Save for the wind, there's little sound— God knows Brian wants to keep silent.

“Yes,” he says, finally. She gives him an imploring look from her reclined position. He shakes his head no. “It doesn’t matter now.”

"It does. What you want in life matters,” Katya says. The surprise returns to his face. "As crazy as that may sound to you."

"It's not that simple," he says. She narrows her eyes at him. "It's what I do that matters. Not what I want."

"Are you happy?" she asks, because out of all the burning questions she has for him, it is the one that would eat her alive if she didn't ask it before she's gone. His eyes widen to a comical degree before he catches himself.

"I love the animals," he says, slowly. "And this work is in my family, always has been. It's important to the community."

She softens her approach. "That's not what I asked."

"Please don't ask me that, Katya."

It's not a harsh tone, but a pleading one. She's not sure which is worse.

“Okay. I'm sorry," Katya says as she sits up. She can tell in the way his shoulders lose their tension that he immediately accepts her apology. "I don’t doubt the importance of the farm. But the farmhands all say you do too much. You can afford to cut back. They're on your side, to help you. You can have some time for yourself,” she takes hold of his bent knee, makes him meet her eyes. “For other people. Do you have friends in town?”

He tells her no. Katya can't say she's shocked. She scoots closer to him and takes his hand in hers.

“Hypothetically, if you weren't working on the farm. If you didn't have to, what would you do?”

“Music,” he says, without thought. “But I’m not good enough.”

“You don’t know until you try.”

“I did. Everyone told me no,” Brian says. He spares her a look and Katya nods for him to go on. “I paid for voice lessons. Got better, but they told me to pursue something else. It wasn't that I was bad, but that I was average. Which...is worse. I tried out places around the city, auditioned to be a regular singer, but nobody wanted me. Hell, I even managed to get a demo recorded. You can guess what became of that.”

“When was this?”

“Right after high school. My parents gave me some wiggle room before putting me to work full time. If I could get somewhere in music, I could go out and do that. But it didn’t happen, wasn’t going to. So I stayed here. Then they died. Left the farm to me and my sister, so that was all the more reason to stay.”

“You should try again,” she offers. He doesn’t disagree. But he doesn't _agree_ either. He stares ahead, into the cornfield. “I’ve heard you singing. You're good.”

“What would Shea do without me?”

“She’d do fine. She has five whole workers that aren't you. And from what I've heard, they'd work for free.”

“Starting over scares me,” Brian sounds so much younger when he says it. She places her free hand over the one he's holding with an iron grip.

“I could help you. I want to help you.”

He looks over at her for a second, really looks at her, like she has all the answers to his life's questions, but then something in his eyes changes, and he’s staring up at the stars again.

"This is the most you've talked since I met you," Katya says, somewhat resignedly. Brian gives the sky a small smile. "This is the most I've learned about you."

His following laugh is tinged with self-deprecation. "I wouldn't count on it to be a regular thing."

"I don't," Katya says. She pats his hand gently and gives him a smile of her own.

 

 

Eventually, they head back where they came from. Katya follows after but she loses him for a couple of terrifying seconds until his hands are parting the stalks, revealing his face. Katya stares at him. Everything is too dreamlike for her not to brush her knuckles down his cheek. He takes her hand once more, leading her all the way back to the truck before he lets go.

Brian leans over the side of the truck, digging around the truck bed. Katya sees his whistle gripped in the hand not slung over the truck. Katya crosses the wide gap between them and grabs his shoulder. She tugs, gets him to spin around and face her.

She presses her hands against his chest, runs them up and down his torso. His breathing picks up underneath her palms.

He drops the whistle onto the ground to cup the back of her head and bring her forward to his mouth. Katya sighs against his bottom lip and he opens up for her, wet and delicious. She licks over his teeth before sucking on the tip of his tongue. She does what she wants to his mouth and he takes it, moaning lowly. He tastes like mint but his mouth's warmth has taken over any artificial coolness.

She feels his fingers curl under her one of the straps of her tank top and she whines as he slides it down her shoulder.

Katya pulls at his other arm, wanting his hands all over her, but he tugs it away, revealing his whittling knife. He spins it around in his grip and holds out the handle to her. Her jaw drops in disbelief, not taking him for someone into playing around with knives. She pulls the knife away from him, watching his eyes flutter as she does.

The blade shines in the moonlight as she runs it from his collarbone up to his neck. She holds it underneath his jaw. He swallows and his knees buckle, hitting her legs. She brings her other hand to cup his dick through his jeans and sighs through her nose at how big and hard he is.

“Of course you like this, Jesus freak,” she whispers. “I should’ve known. Country boy like you needs it in the worst way. Isn’t that right?”

His face falls and his hips shift, pressing him further up into her hand. She squeezes him tight enough to make his ass hit the truck and push a grunt out of him.

She hits the button of his pants with the blade before popping it undone. His eyes are glazing over already. She’s eager to see tears fall at how good she’ll suck him off.

She drops down to her knees and drops the knife to the ground. She unzips his pants. He clutches her shoulders hard, thick fingers digging in. She groans, imagines him holding her like this and fucking her throat, but suddenly he’s pulling her up to her feet.

“Not here,” he says. For a man with a bead of sweat dripping down his brow and his pants undone, he sounds surprisingly authoritative. “Not out in some field, like we’re animals.”

“What?” she asks. Her head is spinning from the change of scenery he’s making. “This is where all the fun is,” she says, pressing her hands to his chest again. He’s holding her by the armpits and she wants him to push her back down to the ground.

Katya is not usually the type to want that kind of thing. She supposes he’s just too rugged for her not to want to be manhandled.

“No,” Brian says. His mouth closes into a firm line, but he looks at her like she’s delicate enough to break in his grasp. He loosens his grip on her and cups her elbows and gives them a gentle squeeze. And then he presses a kiss to her forehead. "You deserve better."

He slides out of the space they’ve created, zipping up and buttoning his jeans as he rounds the back of the truck, pushing up the tailgate on his way to the driver’s side.

He enters the truck and pops open the passenger’s door for her. He starts the engine and the music takes over the sound of the wind sliding through the cornstalks and the cicadas chirping in the trees. She inhales and exhales a deep breath, rubbing the handle of the knife.

She tosses it into the truck bed and steps up into the cab, sitting down with a huff. Her dick softens only marginally during the ride back home and she spares glances over at him every so often, noting that he’s faring far worse than her. They don’t speak on it. He tells her goodnight softly from the truck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! :)
> 
> for anyone interested, i've made the playlist for this public. [listen here.](https://open.spotify.com/user/werewolvse/playlist/0YMbXYyU1viRGIsbtuki6k?si=vRvBo_DcQAa5JWHIiFEz8Q)


	7. A Sunken Artifact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's so quiet here, alone with him, in this sanctuary from everyone and everything. Even the thunderstorm is holding its breath. She releases the one lodged in her cramping chest. The smile is gone from his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)

A thunderstorm of Old Testament proportions halts work one Saturday evening and the entire clan huddles up in the farmhouse's living room after dinner.

Pearl is asleep, nestled into Shea's side, on a small loveseat they drug in from their bedroom. Roy fills the armchair. Kurtis and Dusty camp out on a bed of pillows piled on the carpet. Katya is the middle bug between Brian and Violet on the couch, tucked in between their long limbs.

Everyone is some kind of tipsy. They've been passing around a bottle of red wine.

Shea turned on the record player on and it's spinning a Barbara Lewis album. Dusty and Kurtis are watching the TV on mute and the pair supply their own dubbing for the old B-movie that's playing. Kurtis's odd wit and Dusty's silly adlibbing make for an entertaining banter until they grow bored and the pillow-bed becomes a stronghold for the wine. Roy falls asleep.

Brian is nursing his preferred blackberry brandy. The smell is sweet, pleasant, and when she told him so, he asked if she wanted a sip. Shea gawked at them. He's never offered it to anyone else. Katya thanked him, but said no. She wants him to have something nice for himself.

He's freshly washed, smelling of lemongrass bar soap, and his cut-off sweatshirt provides plenty of warm skin against hers. Katya has her head on his shoulder. He's reading a book on poetry.

"The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe" is its title. The paper is musky and every turn of a page produces a loud, crisp crinkle. His page-turning becomes less frequent the further into it he gets. She doesn’t realize until page 39 that he's waiting until she's finished reading as well.

Dusty sits up suddenly and yawns. "Say, when will—"

"The pie won't be ready for half an hour," Shea answers. Dusty mutters under his breath and slumps back down onto the pillows. An argument between the two begins, waking Pearl. Violet and Kurtis share a tired look and head upstairs.

Brian dislodges himself from the embrace of the couch and escapes into the kitchen. Katya follows suit.

She catches him rummaging through the fridge with the hand not cradling his drink and she hops up to sit on one of the counters. She stares at his ass. He switched into a pair of tiny gym shorts out of his coveralls. She's starting to feel drunk herself.

"It must be nice to have an unexpected day off," she says. Brian ceases his search and shuts the fridge door. He disposes of the space between them and settles next to her, leaning his hip against the counter.

"It's strange. I dunno what to do when I'm not," Brian stops short. "I go to the movies. That would be nice..."

She can hear the silent _with you_  at the end of his sentence. Her feet are kicking where they hang above the tile floor and she drags a foot against Brian's bare leg, watches as a muscle in his jaw begins to twitch. He takes a sip of his drink.

"I can drive you," Katya offers with a grin, picking up where he left off. "I'm not drunk and I'm not scared of thunder. Whatever boring documentary you want to see, I can handle."

"There's none out right now," Brian puts on an annoyed face that she sees right through. She gets a second wind of amusement when she realizes she's supposed to.

"Aw," she pouts. "Too bad."

"They're showing this black-and-white movie from two years ago. It's about a weird baby," he says. She raises a brow. He laughs self-deprecatingly. "I don't know what else is out, honey."

Katya blushes at _honey_. She removes herself from the counter and selects Brian's keys off the nearby rung. "I think I can stomach a weird baby movie. Come on."

 

She had plans to jerk him off or at least make out with him in the dark theater, but the movie is fascinating. Her attention is directed at the screen for the entire one hour and forty-nine minutes, save for the back and forth passing of a flask Brian took from his truck's glovebox.

His arm warms her shoulders and he falls asleep midway through, but when she begins a recap on the slow, careful drive home, he turns down the radio.

 

Everyone is asleep in the farmhouse when they make it through the cottage's door. She's holding up better than he is, but they're both idiots giggling over nothing. He starts humming something and his face is as soft as it’s ever been, the alcohol relaxing his features.

Katya has him lean on her as she guides him across the floor and to the bed.

“ _Miss Katya_ ,” he takes on innocent damsel’s voice. Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. She tries not to encourage him with a laugh. She fails. “Are you by chance a religious woman?”

He’s forgotten in his current state that she stays home every Sunday. She shakes her head no.

Katya eases him down onto her bed and she pulls off his boots and socks before she starts tucking him in. For a man his size, he’s easily pliable whilst drunk and he lets her move him around to be in a comfortable position before she pulls the sheets and blanket over him.

He's sleepily blinking up at her, waiting on a verbal answer. She laughs under her breath.

“ _God_ no,” she says. She steps out of her sneakers and plucks off her socks.

Brian chuckles. “You know what bible verses you remind me of?”

She eyes him warily but he clearly doesn’t register it. He adjusts his head against his pillow and swallows hard.

“And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee. For whither thou goest," he draws his hand up and points a finger towards her, then towards himself. "I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”

The King James speak makes it difficult to process any of _that_. She sits down heavily on the edge of the bed and pulls off her shorts, sets her eyeglasses down on the nightstand.

“You can barely walk and yet you can recite a bible verse?” Katya asks, looking over her shoulder down at him.

“Two. Ruth 1:16 and 1:17,” he says. His eyes go to the ceiling. “Sometimes I have nightmares about my family’s land catching on fire. Sometimes I want to go into the woods and never come back. Or that’s what I’d been fantasizing about for so long when I think I’m going to die out there, old and tired and alone. But now you’re here. And I find myself daydreaming about Laurel Canyon.”

Her stomach flips. “Brian..."

“I know,” he sighs and covers his face with his hands. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. You should have,” Katya touches his chest. His heart is beating rabbit-fast. He's turned his tank-top translucent with today's sweat. “I wished you would’ve said it sooner.”

“Me too.”

She crawls up the bed and slides under the thin covers to lie next to him. She pulls his hands off of his face. They lie there, still, without making any sound. She keeps his hands in hers.

"Can I know why you came here?" he asks, shifting to be closer to her. "You don't have to tell me. But if you don't, I'll keep believing you were sent to me from Heaven."

She's at a loss for words. She's still processing this Ruth character— Katya had assumed he went to church with everyone else to have time off from work. She doesn't know what to think now, but he could just be even drunker than she thought.

After chewing on her lip until it hurts, she lands on saying:

"I needed to leave L.A. and clear my head. I was stuck, creatively. Emotionally. Everyone over there wants so much from you, all the time. Even the people who love you. I was trapped there. I needed to be free."

"I'm sorry," he says. The most simple response shouldn't claw into her as it does, but she knows, if she knows _anything_ , that he means it more than anyone who has ever said it to her before. More than anyone who will ever say it to her again. She could cry. "I won't ask much from you."

It's a promise. He seals it with a kiss to her knuckle. He makes her feel like a mother embraced by her child and a wife embraced by her husband and a child embraced by their father, all at once. He makes her feel _safe_ , is the easier route of explanation. There's another word, too. She'll address that later, when her brain is refreshed and his big brown eyes aren't staring at her, making her weak all over.

"But I will ask you sleep here tonight," Brian continues. He has a tiny smile on his face. "Say you'll stay with me?"

"It's my bed," she laughs very softly. He does too, then mumbles something about being drunk and dumb. "I'll stay. Cross my heart."

They turn silent again. She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. His palm is burning hers up. If his heart line isn't seared onto hers by morning, she'll be upset.

The cottage is lit sparsely by the kerosene lamps burning outside in the night. Kurtis, or maybe someone else, anticipated the state Katya and Brian would return in and opened the curtains and lit the lamps for her before they came back from the theater. The lamps will burn out soon, drawing up the warm honey glow they cast and leaving the insides of the cottage awash in darkness.

She thinks the talking is over, then he shifts closer to her again. Their noses almost touch, one head adjustment away from the pointed beak of hers grazing against the round bulb of his.

"I want to know you," he says. "Really know you. Is that asking for too much?"

"No," she smiles. "I want you to know me. And I want the same from you."

The light grows more faint with every unhurried second that passes. She holds onto the sight of him soft and drowsy and beautiful in her bed with an iron grip.

“How long 'til you go?” he whispers.

It's so quiet here, alone with him, in this sanctuary from everyone and everything. Even the thunderstorm is holding its breath. She releases the one lodged in her cramping chest. The smile is gone from his face.

“We have time,” she whispers back. He closes his eyes. A shiny wet streak slithers down his cheek. All her thoughts of crying and it is Brian who commits the first tear.

“But it’s gonna end.”

He takes her hand and rolls over to face away from her, but he keeps her palm over his heart. The frenzied beating slowly calms down and she feels his body relax in his sleep. It takes her much longer to drift off and join him.

They'll wake up with hands still entwined, with her chest touching his back and her cheek pressed to his shoulder.

 

The next day, Brian's forgotten his lunch again.

Katya catches Dusty before he can drive it up to him and the interaction is much of the same from the last time: Dusty smells like animal shit and Katya is bored, wants to do something helpful. Wants to see Brian. She voices the first desire, not the second.

She comes upon him in the field playing with the collies. He's smiling, laughing, talking to the dogs. He's got a large stick in his hands, moving it all around him to make them jump and chase after him. He runs fast and moves more agilely than she'd have expected from him, especially when on a hangover during a long day of work.

He comes to an abrupt stop to catch his breath and drops the stick. He hasn't spotted her yet, he's turned away, and the dogs are too busy gnawing on the stick to bark. The sheep are too lazy, eating and sleeping, to call any attention to her. She keeps silent, standing at the fence. He sets his hands on his hips and tilts his head up to the sky.

The sky wraps itself up in dull grey clouds. It was rainy this morning, left over from the night-before thunderstorm. The weather has been cool enough for her to have been out and about all day, though the ground has patches of thick mud she's had to watch out for.

She pulls an apple out of his lunch pail and takes aim, hits Brian square in the ass with it. He casts a look over his shoulder that makes her burst out laughing as she climbs over the fence. He stands still, pouting as she makes her way over, then he is bending over, curling his hand into the dirt and turning around with it, pelting her chest with a lump of dirt.

It doesn't hurt, but she gasps. He's given Johnny Rotten a black eye. It is his turn to laugh.

She drops the lunch pail and charges at him, ramming her head into his stomach and wrapping her arms around his waist. She's taken him by surprise and tugs him halfway to the ground. He moves around in her arms and shrugs her off.

The sheep break out into loud bleats and the dogs bark in excitement. Brian tells them to run off. They follow his command. The sheep soon grow bored watching Katya and Brian move in a circle and return to their lazing and grazing.

When Katya goes for him again, he wraps an arm around her and starts hoisting her up and down. She elbows him in the gut.

They are a symphony of grunts, curses, giggles and sharp breaths. They stumble across the field and kick up mud and dirt as they pull each other along, wrestling and laughing— they're two school children horsing around during recess. Out of sight of authority, their worries are out of mind.

Katya isn't feeble. She's lean muscle, where Brian is heavy. He’s taller and has more fat on him as well. She uses his size to her advantage and kicks his legs out from under him, sending him to the ground with a hard thump.

She straddles him, struggles to pin his hands above his head until she spits on his face and he is blinking up at her in surprise, arms turning limp and pliable to her command. She interlocks their fingers and squeezes, stares down at his wide eyes and heaving chest, smelling of sweat and dirt and Man. _She wants him, she wants him, she wants him._

"I won," she says. She's panting. He is too.

He smiles. "You did."

"Are you hungry?" Katya asks. The apple is next to his head. His smile loosens into parted lips and he nods, digging his head further into dirt.

She releases one of his hands to grab the apple and wipes the dirt off before raising the fruit up to her mouth to take a bite. She swallows it down before lowering the apple to his mouth, feeding it to him. Juice slides from his lips down his cheek as he chews.

Her hard-on is digging into his stomach. She felt his own as she was tackling him. She grinds her butt down onto him and listens to him try to swallow down every sound until a pitiful groan slips out. Katya breathes out a heavy sigh.

"I've been dying to suck on you," she says. Katya doesn't mask any of her want, voice going unrestrainedly whiney, but she's blushing at her own frankness. "Aching for it."

"Jesus," he breathes, his eyes wide open, like he's just heard the naughtiest thing in the world. It's unbearable, she's going to die, and then, "Yeah. Yeah, Katya, _please_ , Christ."

Katya continues to rub down on him and bunches up the material of his shirt between her fingers. "You said I deserve better. Don't I deserve your dick in my mouth?"

"Yeah," he groans. His big hands go to her hips, rising up towards her breasts. "Yeah, you do."

She pulls his hands off of her and returns them to the ground. His face screws up in pain. Not from where she touched him, but from where she isn't.

"You said that we shouldn't do it out in some field like we’re animals. Fuck that."

"Fuck that," he repeats. She leans in close to his face. He's breathing heavy through his nose. She kisses him on the mouth, softly, and he returns it just as soft. She takes her lips off of his to press them against his ear.

"I want to be an animal with you, Brian. I want to be really, really dirty. I want to be a bad, dirty girl. Do you want that?"

"Yeah," he says. She likes that he can't seem to say much else, that she has this brain-wiping effect on him; she's the woman out of his wet dreams come to life.

"You want me to be bad?" she asks. It's partly to tease him, partly to see if he genuinely wants this. If he wants her.

"Real bad," he answers. She grins and pulls away from him, sits back up on his heaving stomach.

"You want me?"

"I need you," he says. "Biblically."

He says it with a tiny smirk. It makes her laugh and makes her want him more.

She tugs up his shirt. She doesn't waste time taking it off all the way, instead lets it slip past his head and stay taut around his neck and shoulders. She slaps her hands down on his chest, squeezes his pecs in her hands, pinches his nipples. He gasps and she lets go to drag her palms across the sweaty hair covering his torso down to the waistband of his pants.

She digs her knees into the ground to sit up off of him. She unties his coverall sleeves from their place around his waist and tugs the zipper down and pulls his coveralls down to his knees. He has stretch marks around his hips and across his thighs, pale stripes against his tan skin.

His cock is hard through his white briefs and she whimpers. He's so big and wet for her. She wants him deep inside of her, but she'll make do with stuffing him inside her mouth for now.

She folds down the waistband to let all of him pop out, and then she's sliding down his body, ducking her head to lick and suck his balls, tasting his sweat before she's jerking him off, gaze following the slide of his foreskin with her movements. He sits up on his elbows to watch. His eyes are wild.

She meets his burning stare until she can't wait any longer and starts licking over the veins running across his cock. That wretches a groan deep from his gut and he's knocked onto his back again when she starts sucking on his fat tip and curling her tongue over his hole. She continues to jerk him off— he's a two-hander, so it keeps her frantic fingers busy.

Brian murmurs nonsense as he squirms underneath her, arms above his head, hands digging into the ground, as she lowers her mouth further. She takes her time, mouth straining and jaw quickly beginning to ache around his girth and length.

As they move they slather themselves in mud and strands of grass. Everything is lush and wet and soft beneath their bodies and it soothes her, letting her mind sink totally into the sensation of his hot, thick cock between her lips.

She maneuvers up and off of him, tugs her pants and panties down to free her dick and she angles her ass up high in the air and brings her head down all the way, taking all of him into her throat, choking herself. She keeps one hand on his balls and the other massaging her own to take the edge off.

One of his hands releases the ground and he runs his fingers through her hair. His other hand moves up her spine and to her ass. His hand covers the entirety of her asscheek, and he spreads dirt across her skin. She knows he's turned it pink when he brings his palm down in a light slap. Her hips jerk and she gags around him.

She wants him to do it again, but instead he squeezes her asscheek hard before moving his hand up and curling all ten fingers into her hair, holding delicately, not pulling. He's still squirming, but he keeps his hips mostly flat on the grass, never bucking up into her, letting her set the pace. She's being a bad girl for him, but he's being a good boy for her.

He hasn't even tried to touch her tits since she pulled his hands away from them. She appreciates it and hates it at the same time.

Brian comes without warning down her throat. She swallows all of it, sucks it down, lets it settle in her belly. He cups her armpits and pulls her up his body, with great reverence; a diver rescuing a sunken artifact. He has tears in his eyes and he's smiling so sweetly. She adores him.

"Oh," she sighs. Her dick is on fire against his leg. She's barely able to hold herself up off of him. "Brian, baby..." 

"Katya," he whispers, bringing his hands to her face.

His thumbs brush over her pink cheeks before he pulls her in closer and he kisses her deeply through the sliding of his hand down her stomach. She's trembling as he rubs the tip of her dick like it's her clit. His eyes are latched onto her face, he's watching her the way a man watches his last sunset. He brings his other hand down the seam of her ass and he begins to rub her hole, rendering her body and mind useless.

Her hearing goes after she comes into his hand and she foggily hears herself cry out into the warmth of his hung-open mouth. He pulls his hand up from between her legs and drags it down his face, smearing her come all over himself. He sucks on his fingers. All of it makes her eyes roll back and her voice shatter on a high-pitched moan.

She collapses onto him. His arms wrap around her and he holds her close while they both steady out. Katya snaps out of her daze when she makes eye contact with a sheep that's a couple of feet away from Brian's head. The animal bleats and Katya jumps, scrambles off of him, ending up with her ass landing in a puddle of mud.

Brian's laughing until she lunges at him and the wrestling starts over, though now that they're half-naked it's considerably more gentle. Katya ends up on top again, kissing his neck. Her lips go numb against his skin at some point and she burrows her head into him, her ear against his pulse.

"Fuck," Brian mutters. "We're a mess. We gotta wash up."

"You have my come all over your face," Katya states, pleased with herself.

She sits up, licks her thumb and wipes the corner of his lip as if that is any help. Brian smirks and pulls her in for a nasty kiss that has her whining into his mouth and rutting against his hairy thigh. They make out just like that, unruly, half-naked, his hands all over her ass and hers digging into his hips, but they're both too wiped out to go again. And it's getting dark.

"Sorry for the dirt in your hair," he says after they're settled down. His fingers are carding through it, picking at the clumps sticking strands together, while she rests her head on his chest.

Katya blows at the hair around his nipple. "I'll let you wash it."

Neither of them bothers to make an effort to appear decent; nothing is done about the mud, grass, and come spread over their skin and clothes. Nobody comes this way to check on him after lunch, given his late, sometimes odd hours. It's made her worry for him before, but it's a relief at present. She runs a hand down his sweaty bicep.

"What is this?" he asks. She can hear his careful hesitation. "Is this a one-time thing?"

"I don't want it to be," she tells him. It's her honest word. His chest rises and falls underneath her head with his sigh of relief.

"Me neither. This is a good thing we got going on here," he says. She sits up a little and twists around to kiss him on the cheek.

"Should we tell the others?" she asks. She wets a finger to wipe off a streak of dirt on his nose. "About us in general terms, I mean. Not me sucking your dick."

He snorts. She giggles and pinches the tip of his nose between her fingers before settling her hand on his stomach. He cups her elbow and strokes her skin.

"What do you want?" he asks. He's gentle with it. "We can tell them anything. Or tell them nothing at all. I'm okay with whatever you want."

"You are?" she asks. She's surprised. He's so private with his life, a mystery to his own people. She'd have imagined he'd want this to be wrapped tight and hidden away.

"Yes," he says. He's dead serious. It's branded across his face; his eyes go crystal clear, his brow wrinkles, and his mouth straightens out. "You know and I know. That's what matters to me. Everything else is up to you, darlin'. I'm happy either way."

She considers it, turning her head to look back at what she can see of the farmhouse through the trees. The windows are lit-up, orange and cozy. She looks back at him. His patience of a saint makes her stomach tighten. He's happy. She is too.

"I'd like this to be between us," she decides. He nods. "For now. They all can be kind of..."

Katya trails off, not wanting to insult her generous hosts. Brian wears a knowing grin. The skin around his eyes crinkles.

"Nosy," he supplies. He tilts his head towards the deeper woods beyond the field, an area she's never ventured to before. "There's a creek up that way. We can clean up there. Won't have to go back to the house like this. Won't have to say a word."

"Thank you," she says. She sits up all the way and fixes him with a serious look. "I'm not ashamed. That isn't why. I want you to know that."

"I'm not either. There's no shame in keeping our business to ourselves."

"For now," she reminds him. He tucks a lock of her dirty hair behind her ear, then tugs on the lobe ever so gentle.

"For now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you enjoyed this, consider supporting me on [patreon](https://www.patreon.com/alwrites) where i post previews, deleted scenes, and more. i even post new content (including this chapter update) on there in advance of posting them here!


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